


there's the girl, growing up, who was me

by meredyd



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M, Fantasy-History, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-04 21:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12780006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/pseuds/meredyd
Summary: “Won’t you be cold?”Anya asks. The woman’s eyes are enormous, dusty blue and sad, familiar. She wraps the belt twice around so the coat doesn’t slide right off. It’s lined with a thin layer of silk, with a piece of something poking out of one of the inner pockets Anya feels through her numbness.“No,”she says.“I’m not. Take a moment. You’ll see.”One daughter may be still alive.





	there's the girl, growing up, who was me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelsunknown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsunknown/gifts).



Anya awakens to the shock of a hand to her skin. She’s been so cold, for so long, that for a moment it feels like nothing, a numb space against dry flesh. It takes her a minute to differentiate each finger, longer to feel the warmth radiating against her cheek. She opens her eyes. This is what they meant, when they said freezing. When they talked about the people who froze to death in the streets, someone she loved from the warmth of an opulent house speaking in hypotheticals. This is what they meant. Anya wills her eyes to open. 

_No, no_ , the voice says to her. _Don’t push yourself._ A language she could understand but not speak. _Do it slowly. With care, Malenkaya. You’ll want to save your energy._

She trusts the voice, and does what it says. With care, Anya opens her eyes more slowly. With care, she adjusts to the darkness of the road and the woods and the snow that’s only a thin layer atop the dead grass. A part of her that still has knowledge if not memory knows the layer will build, it will come thick and fast, and she’s hungry. 

The hand cups her face now. It belongs to a woman she knows, and now the woman is helping her sit up from where her shoulder digs into the dirt, and she realizes how violently she’s shivering. The woman takes off her own jacket. It’s brown and huge and warm, much too big for a child. 

“Won’t you be cold?” Anya asks. The woman’s eyes are enormous, dusty blue and sad, familiar. She wraps the belt twice around so the coat doesn’t slide right off. It’s lined with a thin layer of silk, with a piece of something poking out of one of the inner pockets Anya feels through her numbness. 

_"No_ ,” she says. _“I’m not. Take a moment. You’ll see.”_

Her cheeks are pink and her hair is glossy. Her smile is wide and worried and beautiful. Something about her, something she has not completely forgotten, makes Anya think this woman must be in love. Anya wants to grow up to look like her, and as the tips her ears and fingers and toes settle into feeling again, realizes that, in fact, she does. 

_“Be brave _,” Anya says to herself.__

____

It’s not much longer when the nurses and the sisters find her and take her and life begins to flow again, all at once, forward. 

◆ 

Alexei and Anya are small (though Anya has been shooting up past him like a weed, leaving her wrists and ankles cold) and if not exactly quiet, practiced in the art of sneaking around right under people’s noses. The ballroom is clean, as all the rooms of the palace always are, but Anya can imagine it cracking and cobwebbed in it’s winter disuse. There hasn’t been a dance, or a party, in some time. She unlaces her shoes and does the only logical thing, sliding across the polished floors in her stocking feet, holding both of Alexei’s hands in her own as she does whenever she takes him skating and their parents don’t know. He won’t fall. Anya is sure of herself in her ability to protect her brother. 

Around and around, keeping one hand against the wall, Anya doesn’t see anyone, but Alexei insists. She was there, he says, and they don’t stop looking until they find her.

Or, Anya realizes with a shock, she finds them.

“Shhh,” she whispers, although Alexei hasn’t said anything. “Do you think she’ll play with us?”

Anya knows, because their mother has said as much, that she’s getting too old for play. Make-believe and spying and slipper skating and stealing desserts from the patissier in her opera gloves. She’s too old for pretend and magic - her tutors, her older relatives, even her sisters, have made this very clear. A young woman now. A young lady of grace, poise, responsibility. Yet something sends tingles down her spine she can’t ignore, and looking at Alexei, he feels it too. 

There’s a lot Anya has become used to, has had to become used to. The precipice of uncertainty she feels them stand on each day. Nothing has prepared her to meet the child she’s seen in pictures and heard in stories, dressed in proper white lace and a blue hair bow. 

Alexei shrugs. “I didn’t think you’ve come with me if you knew all the details.”

Anya doesn’t remember herself ever being shy with new people, so it’s even stranger that she’s shy with the person she is. It’s as if, and the thought makes Anya puff out her chest a bit, she is so impressed with how she has grown up. Certainly, that’s the reason.

 

“I can’t _believe_ Nana hasn’t taken us to Paris yet!”

“No, not yet,” says Anya, wrinkling her nose, both at this and at the fact that her feet still don’t reach the floor in Papa’s big chairs. “But very soon, now that I’m— now that we’re old enough. I miss her so much.”

Anya watches herself shake her curls in front of her face. “Nobody understands us like she does.”

“Nobody understands like she does,” says Anya, trying to reassure which one of them she doesn’t know. “But you’re her special girl. And sometimes your sisters will be jealous of that. Try to be nice to them, even when they’re annoying. Especially Maria, I know she acts a bit like a know-it-all but the two of you are going to be great friends, and you’ll need each other.”

Anya is aware in a way she never has been of just how young young is. Dewy skin and pure innocence, memories that are already fuzzy to her. 

“When you go to Paris you must try all of the confectionary. Especially the chocolates.”

“Oh, of course I will. Did you know there are entire stores, as big as the summer palace, that sell only candy?”

“And go to the ballet and see the prima ballerina and shake her hand, and you’ll become friends.”

“Shall we?”

“Yes, yes!”

“And we do become friends with everyone we meet, don’t we?” Anya crosses her arms, afraid that if she was to reach out and touch this child somehow she would vanish, already knowing the answer. 

 

She lied, Anya thinks, breath so hot in her chest she doesn’t feel the cold, she lied, she lied, she lied to herself who she trusts more than anyone. But how could she know? The gunshots still ring in her ears, and they’ll never really stop. 

◆ 

For the first time in all their journeying something has lived up to Anya’s dreams exactly. The city, perfect, wrapped in a pastel sunset. The dirt and noise and crowds of any city are there as they would have been in Petersburg but here they somehow seem less desperate, flaws necessary to avoid something just too good to be true. 

She could stay here forever, watching the houselights flash on in windows as families gather together to eat a late supper, or women clattering home against the wet pavement in high heeled shoes. And the firefly lights of the Eiffel Tower: she would need nothing else. 

But as it has nonstop for the past few weeks, the world keeps moving, and forces Anya to move with it. 

 

Countess Lily is taking them all shopping, and she has declared this quite dramatically to the excitement of Vlad, distrust of Dmitry, and confusion of Anya. 

“Anya, you’re a lovely young woman. And a lovely young woman shouldn’t spend a second longer than she needs to in…well. You’ve done your best til now and that’s all that matters, right? Onward!”

Onward into a store like a jewelbox, nearly empty but for the four of them with pearlescent closets that open and then disappear into the walls, huge enough to crawl inside. A man with sharp lapels and little patience is measuring her as she attempts to stand the way Vlad has taught her a princess must stand. “Think about your chin being pulled forward by a small string. Straighten your shoulders. But the most important thing is to look like you belong.” 

That last one may take some doing. Perhaps a bit more explanation there wasn’t ever going to be time for. 

And so Anya does what she has always done. Find the person in the room drawing the most, or the least, or the most appropriate level of attention, and make herself become them. To not know who you are is to easily slip into another skin. Right now, she’s the silver haired grande dame examining silk scarves. The way she holds her shoulders, draped in layers of velvet that look at once warm and weightless. The woman is hypnotic, and watching her Anya is able to right herself for long enough but what seems like eons, until the measurements are over.

“We’ll have you a whole new suite of clothes made. A coat of course, although you’ll find it isn’t nearly as cold here, at least six dresses, just to start out with for everyday wear. That’s not to mention shoes and jewels and stockings and something to wear to the ballet!” Lily is in her element. Anya notices also that Vlad had emerged with her from behind a cluster of mannequins with red lipstick peppered over his face. She sighs, but turns it into something pleasant, and pleased. 

“This is too much,” Dmitry says. “This is excessive. Do you have any idea how much people would give for one crystal off this ridiculous handbag back home?” Anya has never heard him say “back home.” It makes something in her heart turn over. 

“Oh, come. We’ll get you a nice suit to match and you’ll be a ravishing couple.” 

“Lily!” Anya shouts, to prevent Dmitry from also shouting. At this the old woman moves to look at her, past her, having chosen a scarf and paid for it. “The ballet is tomorrow evening. Let’s do that, um, first?”

“Yes, wonderful,” Lily says distractedly, waving her hand, keeping one eye on Dmitry and the other hand on the small of Anya’s back. “Just us girls.” 

But in less than fifteen minutes Lily and Vlad have made themselves scarce, Dmitry is lecturing the poor soul selling shoes, and Anya is once again by herself in a fairytale place she didn’t ask to be. 

 

The old woman has come to speak with her, sitting dejected on the dias as she waits for fabric samples. An old song floats through her head, without words. Something she used to hum when she was bored but knew how lucky she was for such a particular kind of boredom. She’s speaking, but too fast for Anya to follow, in an accent that their short time in Paris has taught her to recognize. A voice that’s been everywhere, never long enough to build a full inflection. But there’s something in there, something almost rhythmic at the very bottom of the of her words, that’s forcefully and unmistakably Russian. 

“My French isn’t very good,” Anya tries. “I’m…out of practice.”

“A countrywoman,” says the old lady. “How wonderful to meet you here.” How fascinating, to hear a voice that seems now to come from another world entirely. “It is like we are already friends.”

The easy sincerity of her words make Anya smile. She can’t help it. That seems to be the order of Paris. Freedom, and light, and forgetting her own coiled fear.

“My friend Lily wants me to pick out a dress. I’ve never - I haven’t picked out a dress on my own in a very long time. Not a nice one. I’m not quite sure what to do. I thought this would be alright,” she says, pointing to the fabric now hanging limply against the mirrors. “But she said it makes me look like an uncooked chicken.”

“It’s remarkable how little she’s changed,” says the old woman to herself, and before Anya can ask how they know each other, “She’s absolutely correct as usual, however. You don’t want to look washed out, not at the ballet, and not in front of your young man.” 

“He’s _not_ my young man,” says Anya, which for some reason makes the woman look contented. Dmitry chooses this moment to look back at her. He is making a furious hand motion towards a display of ostentatious women’s hats. Anya ignores him. “How do you know I’m going to the ballet?”

“Oh,” the woman says quickly, lowering herself so she can sit beside Anya. She moves slowly, but with an air of perfect grace, the way Anya imagines her grandmother must move. “All of the city will be there. I only made an assumption, forgive me. And let me look at those eyes.”

She looks at Anya her over her delicately wrought eyeglasses. Their eyes are the same color. But plenty of people’s are. It’s no special shade. 

The old woman is satisfied, nodding to herself, and draws the attention of one of the shop attendants. “My good friend here would like to see that blue fabric, the royal - yes, right there - and that dress, thank you so much. I’ll take it from here.”

There are things Anya knows about this woman already. The first is that against all odds she feels no need to become her, and isn’t exactly certain why. The other is that her kindness is genuine, not the usual veneer of careless wealth put on by so many of the people Vlad and Lily have introduced them to. For some reason, she cares. 

“The dress will be made for you,” she says, “If the design is to your liking. You’ll have to imagine it, but the columns, here, they’ll make you look taller. And the fabric will float behind them like wings. I’m sure your friend won’t be too distressed if it brings to mind a bird. A swan, not a chicken.” 

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” says Anya, aware all at once that in fact it is. That she has seen many beautiful things trickling back into her mind, but not one of them made for who she is, now. This woman knew, what that person would want. “But I can’t pay you for it myself, I’m so sorry, there’s just no way—“

“It’s taken care of,” says the old woman. The peace in her eyes, the satisfaction of being in this precise moment. Anya could envy it, if it didn’t only delight her. “And I have to say, it’s entirely my pleasure.” 

 

Lily approves, for once without reservation. “However did you find something so perfect? I’d wear it in a heartbeat if I had the figure for it. Whoever chose this must have exquisite taste! And you said she spoke Russian but didn’t give her name?”

“No,” Anya says, realizing for the first time, as if in a dream, that even on the package there had been no indication of her mysterious benefactor. “No, I never did find it out.” The words are both true, and not. 

◆ 

Somehow, they arrived back at the hotel room and now Dmitry was unbraiding her hair, the intricate knots and whorls that hold up a crown she’d never wear again. It was only afternoon, and the noise of the street anchored her to reality, but Anya would have sworn they’d been gone days, weeks, an entire other lifetime. Something must have happened in the time between leaving the press conference and now, but it’s a haze of exhaustion, of excitement. It wasn’t important: memories could be packed away and rediscovered again. She knew it, a dazzling new truth resting in her heart, and never again would that be taken from her. 

Only now does Anya see the long path behind them, just how absurd it was to have traveled such a distance and arrive exactly here. They have traveled this same road together for years without knowing it, after all. 

Anya makes a contented noise when the last braid is free. They bathe, dress, drink a bottle of champagne couriered to them by Lily and Vlad, and eat sandwiches on a bridge that has not been named for anyone Anya was related to. The city of lights lives up to its name, one last time, painting the the water below them blue and purple and gold. 

She tugs on his sleeve, pulls him down and kisses him, fizzing with champagne. Tomorrow they will leave, and for the first time in her new life the thought brings with it more excitement than terror. 

 

It snows endlessly on the ship, and Anya to her own surprise revels in it. Hands crossed on the railing, letting it chill her to her bones, imagining each shift of the current as a footprint she is more at home than she had been in some time. Perhaps, she thinks, this was her home now. Suspended in the in-between of one place and another, with Dmitry. 

It doesn’t surprise her, to see herself. Not anymore. The knowledge of another goodbye lodges in her throat and she swallows hard, her eyes burning.

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t seem right.” 

“You needn’t thank _yourself_ ,” says Anya, gangly and exuberant, spinning a little girl in a too-large brown coat in a waltz. 

“Will we see each other again?” asks Anya, when she’s been set down, voice and body wobbling a little as the waves roll smooth beneath the deck, her feet. “I think we’ll see each other when we need to. But maybe not that much.”

“I think so too,” Anya says, getting to her knees to meet her own eyes. “I’m sure of it, in fact.” 

Nobody she loves, Anya knows now, seems to ever really go away. They dance in and out and around, more alive than memories. And, so. They hold hands for only a moment, different sizes fitting together, and before she can think of more to say they’re gone, but she’s not alone. 

“Dima,” Anya says, looking up, filling up in a rush of amazement and love. “Did you see them?”

He shakes his head, puzzling it out, and walking towards her, uncertain and bright, laughing under a starless sky. “I’m not sure what I saw. But yeah, I think so. Wouldn’t be the strangest thing we’ve encountered lately.” She punches him lightly in the arm.

If behind him there’s a white-haired woman, older than she’s yet seen and so like her grandmother, a woman who who somehow looks approving, well. Anya will keep this to herself, this final secret, the gift of a beautiful future.  
*

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is a bit of a twist on what you asked for, but I hope you enjoy the Romanov survivor I ended up picking. There is, after all, only one. ;) Anastasia has been special to me for so long, and always associated with the holidays somehow in my mind, so getting to write this was some nice dream fulfillment. 
> 
> Happy holidays, yulee, I hope you have a truly wonderful one and the new year is everything you could ever want.


End file.
